The voided Greg Kite trade from Orlando to Houston - July 2nd, 1992
This is part 1 of a series covering the 13 voided trades that occurred in the NBA from 1992 to 2022. It is an adaptation of an episode of Backfired that I published on May 11, 2022. If you would like to listen to this series instead, you can either toggle to the "Episodes" section on this site or find your preferred podcast platform in the sidebar to the left.
July 2nd, 1992 - Greg Kite
The first voided trade in this series occurred in 1992.
The Orlando Magic, just days after drafting Shaquille O’Neal, agreed to send their veteran center, Greg Kite, to the Houston Rockets in exchange for a couple of second-round picks. Kite was sad to be leaving Orlando, but he was very vocal when he was traded, defending the Magic GM Pat Williams and calling the trade “a vindication of one of the charges against Williams.”
Per the Orlando Sentinel, Pat Williams had been criticized for signing mediocre players like Kite, who had career averages of just 2.3 points and 3.2 rebounds, to long-term contracts at above-market-rate salaries.
(I haven’t looked into all of the contracts that Pat Williams offered, but when you’re running an expansion franchise, if you identify someone you want to play for your team— someone you think is a cultural fit— you’ve gotta sweeten the pot a little bit to entice them to play for a team that’s 100% going to win about 20 games. Maybe he went a little overboard.)
“I think with this trade, Pat Williams has been found not guilty of one of the charges levied against him by members of the media,” said Kite, “and that charge is that Pat Williams didn’t know what he was doing when he signed me and other players to long-term contracts. The Rockets seem to think that I am of some value. By signing me, the Magic had an asset.”
The Rockets gave Kite a physical and it turned out that he had an irregular heartbeat. They said no deal, which sent Kite back to Orlando, and that created a lot of extra work for the Magic’s front office to restructure contracts to be able to offer Shaq his rookie deal, which wound up being $17.4 million dollars, over four seasons. (This was before rookie scale contracts were introduced, so the Magic had to clear cap space and make a convincing offer to Shaq.)